Transnational Employment Strain: A Longstanding Feature of Migrant Farm Work

In this chapter, we utilize the transnational employment strain model, outlined in Chapter 2, to examine working and living conditions of migrant farmworkers in two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec, before the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that well-prior to the pandemic migrant farmworkers faced employment demands such as occupational health hazards, including workplace harassment, and workplace pressure to increase productivity and extend their working hours. Separated from their households and communities across transnational space, migrant farmworkers have long been placed in employer-provided housing, often located on farm or adjacent to the worksite and shared with their co-workers. Under these circumstances, housing can be regarded as an extension of worksite, and housing conditions, particularly the overcrowding and substandard conditions, constitute another employment strain. Furthermore, tensions between co-workers flowing from this cohabitation increase employment demands for these migrants. At the same time, we illustrate that the employment resources available to migrant farmworkers to buffer employment demands, such as control over the working environment, broadly conceived, fair remuneration, and employers’ expressions of appreciation, are extremely limited. Finally, government initiatives to address migrant farmworkers’ employment demands in the 2000s and 2010s have a limited impact in light of migrants’ precarious residency status and transnational lives.